13.5.18

A Film a Week - Winter Brothers / Vinterbrodre

Labelled by its
writer-director as a “lack of love” story, Hlynur Palmarson’sWinter Brothers explores the eternal topics of brotherly
“love”, isolation and getting insane. It is centred around two
brothers, both of them workers of a limestone mine and factory
somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Denmark in the unspecified time
frame that looks like a post-apocalyptic version of now, together
with crumbling industrial facilities and containers for housing. The
“normal” brother Johan (played by Simon Sears) fits well with the
proletarian crowd, but has to take care of Emil (Elliott Crosset
Hove), the weird one who is also providing us with the point of view.

He, however, has an
ace in his sleeve: he uses the company’s chemicals to brew some
booze at his home. He earns some extra income with it, seen in an
early scene when he takes the riffle from an older worker as a
payment, but his main goal is attention of his colleagues. When one
of them ends up sick, Emil would be the first suspect especially for
his boss Carl (Lars Mikkelsen, Mads’ elder brother) and the
community shuns him even further. His decaying psyche will reach the
point of no return. The unfounded fantasies about Anna (Victoria
Carmen Sonne), as she is the only woman in the camp and the only one
who does not treat him as a complete moron, will result in open
conflict even with his brother.

The timeline of
low-intensity events with high emotional pay-off is quite linear, but
the sense we get from viewing it is elliptic and blurred. Make no
mistake, Winter Brothers is a full-blown mood piece in which
the plot serves only as a skeleton for imagery, sounds, emotion and
pure weirdness like the riffle-shooting instructions video
(supposedly British and obviously old), overwhelming male nudity
(which is just a metaphor for madness in the nude as the end result
of isolation and cabin fever of sorts) and even the brothers’ very
physical naked fight.

Fine, that does it
for “what”, but the main question here is how, and Palmarson has
a genuine answer to it. The whole thing looks like Emil’s fever
dream accompanied by an intriguing sound design and music by Toke
Brorson Odin. Some other reasons for that feeling are rapid
editing, unique locations and set decoration. The highlight of the
film is its cinematography, analogue on 16 mm film and in not so boxy
5:3 ratio with rounded corners, done by Maria von Hausswolff.
The palette of natural brownish colours was enriched with the usage
of bluish and greyish filters for the additional sense of despair.
Winter Brothers is a sure-handed debut by Palmarson, known for
his award-winning shorts.